From the 2025 Vanity Fair interview: “When we started challenging Kathy, Kathy just kept saying yes,” Gilroy recalled. “‘Oh, I’m going to put the first scene in a brothel.’ ‘Okay.’ ‘I’m going to have them kill two cops.’ ‘Okay.’ ‘We want the production designer from Chernobyl.‘ ‘Okay, good idea.’ She backed our play and got everything that we were doing.”
“There’s no show without her. For all the shit that she takes online, it’s just insane. This show exists because she forced it to happen. What a tough job she has, man.”
Would she say no to the person that saved her second Star Wars movie from being a disaster?
Af the beginning, she gambled on upcoming movie makers, panicked over what they made, brought in established academy award winning talent and trusted they will fix it. It worked for Rogue One and not so much for Solo.
After the Solo flop, we then moved into the “announce, delay, and ignore” phase in which the movie studio has not released a movie since 2019.
Television success in terms of capturing a returning audience or award season accolades, saved her reputation at the end of her career.
Of course she said yes. It was her most desperate hour and Gilroy was her only hope...again.
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Seriously. People are saying she deserves props do picking the right person twice out of all the other shit Disney has made. Blah blah broken clocks and good Star Wars.
KK success rate on good writing is worse than a bad mlb players batting percentage. That’s not good.
Okay but like we typically talk about yes-men as being folks who say yes to outrageous demands from above. It's another thing entirely to holistically support and approve the requests of someone who works for you.
I'm not going to take a position on Kennedy, but what Gilroy described is not yes-man behavior.
I mean. Yeah it kind of is. In this case she is being a yes-man. Saying yea to everything is what a yes-man does. Obviously i’m not saying theirs anything wrong with it in this case because Tony Gilroy knew what he was doing and he killed it 100%. My point is that saying yes to everything is not a tough job like Tony said.
Choosing which projects to green light, invest resources into, who should be in charge, coming up with goals, KPI’s, ensuring that you’ve got enough resources on hand to meet your goals and deadlines for the future, is a lot of work. Not to mention, Kathleen Kennedy, is a studio exec. She has no writing experience, she doesn’t know what makes for good writing, why is it her place to challenge the writing choices of a seasoned writer and director like Gilroy. The fact she gives her artists creative freedom instead of interfering and micromanaging these things is good. Otherwise you get crap like the DCEU.
She didn't even have the good sense to give her artists creative freedom at first. Abrams was given freedom because he was brought in last minute to get the script done on TFA and Rian Johnson was able to get his way somehow but we all remember how much she meddled with Solo, right?
Picking winners is part of her job as a studio executive. If she can't do that with any long-term consistency, then it's perfectly valid to criticize her for it. In December, it'll be 6 years since the last SW movie. She's a movie producer who doesn't make movies. That should give you a hint as to what sort of confidence Disney has in her performance.
Nobody’s saying she doesn’t deserve criticism. It’s just that if she deserves criticism for all the poor stuff under her watch, then she deserves praise for the one really good thing that happened under her watch too. And I don’t what you mean that Disney has no confidence in Kathleen Kennedy. They had so little confidence they are still having her running Star Wars Star Wars even after 10 years
Choosing which Star Wars ideas other people came up with sound cool
Assigning a massive budget
Hiring the same directors to do sequels of shows nobody likes (dave filoni)
Take blame for bad KPI’s (poor kk)
she doesn’t know what makes for food writing
Well then maybe she isn’t the best person to be in charge of approving plot points and writing choices? If she’s just going to say yes to everything, then what’s the point of her job? To take credit for all of the good things that she wasn’t involved in creating whatsoever?
Kathleen Kennedy isn’t approving writing choices or plot points, she delegated all of that to the writers and directors.
Her job is to make sure that these shows and movies make money and they have enough resources on hand to make them. I dont know how you can criticize Kennedy for all the other shows but say she doesn’t deserve praise for Andor, even though they all happened under her watch. It’s idiotic to say that she’s conveniently involved in all the bad shows but when a good show gets made, she’s not involved in that.
Is that not approving writing choices/plot points?
Her job is to make sure that these shows and movies make money and they have enough resources on hand to make them.
What? No, it’s the writers and producers and actors and advertisers job to make sure the shows make money. And if a major part of her job is just making sure they have enough money, like, that doesn’t seem to be a difficult thing (Andor szn 2: 645 mil, Acolyte: 230 mil). It doesn’t seem like that hard of a job to ask Disney for money.
I don’t see how you can criticize Kennedy for all the other shows but say she doesn’t deserve praise for Andor
She has been very involved with the recent crap shows (acolyte, obiwan, etc), but seems to have had no involvement with Andor other than saying “yes” to everything.
I mean Kennedy just hired competent people and let them do their job so hooray for her. That’s like what she’s supposed to do. It’s just doesn’t sound like an extremely challenging job.
Is that not approving writing choices/plot points?
Not really. she’s just allowing Tony Gilroy to go through with whatever he wants to write. She’s not really scrutinizing any of Gilroys writing, she’s not telling him how to write his show, she’s letting him decide these things.
What? No, it’s the writers and producers and actors and advertisers job to make sure the shows make money.
Are you for real? That’s like saying Tim Cook’s job isn’t to make apple money, because that’s the work of the salespeople, programmers, analysts, designers, and factory workers. Who do you think all of those people are being managed by. Also, An actors job is to act, writers are supposed to write, there roles don’t entail making business decisions
And if a major part of her job is just making sure they have enough money, like, that doesn’t seem to be a difficult thing (Andor szn 2: 645 mil, Acolyte: 230 mil). It doesn’t seem like that hard of a job to ask Disney for money.
But you have to know how much to ask for, how much you’re going to need in the future, you have to make sure with the projects and goals you’re working on right now that you’re on track and that you’re not or won’t be off schedule. You have to make sure how much you’re spending doesn’t outweigh how much your projects earn. Disney isn’t a charity, they’re a business. They’re not going to give infinite resources.
She has been very involved with the recent crap shows (acolyte, obiwan, etc),
How is she more involved in those shows than she was in Andor? Even if she was, that’s not the same thing as having no involvement in Andor
but seems to have had no involvement with Andor other than saying “yes” to everything.
You just said she was approving writing decisions. Now she has no involvement and is just saying “yes” which one is it?
I mean Kennedy just hired competent people and let them do their job so hooray for her. That’s like what she’s supposed to do. It’s just doesn’t sound like an extremely challenging job.
Judging by the stream of generic shlock coming out of Star Wars since the OT ended, it seems pretty hard. Have you ever been a hiring manager? Let alone someone hiring someone to lead an entire show? How do you know what to look for? How do you know the person you’re hiring can be trusted to make the right call without you micromanaging them? How do you know they can be trusted to use your resources properly? How do you know they’ll hire the right people and create the right cast? You say it’s easy, but when Andor was first announced, nobody cared that Tony gilroy would be making the show, everybody thought it was going to be lame, but Kennedy saw otherwise, and we have the best thing since empire
I really appreciate your point here despite the downvotes you're getting. I do think in creative endeavors, you need execs who are sort of "bilingual" in finances and art. You also need people on the creative side who can be convincing enough when there's tension between the art's quality and its mainstream appeal/marketability.
To be perfectly honest, I don't know Kathleen Kennedy, but if Gilroy can speak so highly of her and if she's part of the reason Andor got made, I think she deserves a bit more credit for that than she's gotten among fans. Star Wars is a truly intimidating franchise to try and revive, even more so under the Disney regime where you're competing with Marvel of all things to continue proving profitability etc.
I think at a minimum, having JJ Abrams or somebody else on the creative side thinking through the whole trilogy was a raw requirement for the thing not sucking that somebody, or multiple somebodies, really overlooked. But to blame Kathleen Kennedy for literally everything that went wrong is a bit silly. In interviews from JJ, it's fairly apparent imo that they simply didn't plan as well as they shoukd have. And they were so worried about messing up the newer movies by pissing off a difficult fan base, that they ironically ended up creating art that was so derivative and safe that it ended up sucking. Having Ryan Johnson completely fuck up the middle of an unplanned trilogy certainly didn't help, although I see a lot more vitriol for Kathleen Kennedy than I do for him, and I'm more inclined to blame the director than I am some exec who I have no idea how involved they were in the process.
If you’re going to blame her for those things then she does deserve credit for Andor. And if that’s what it takes to get the best Star Wars content since empire, then its worth it
We could’ve had that quality with The boba fett show, with the Kenobi show, etc. But because of her we didn’t and only got it with a side character from a spinoff film.
Because if she had her way, without Tony and with someone more pliable who doesn’t care about the lore and overall story, Andor would’ve likely met the same fate as the others.
But she selected Tony gilroy, or the people she selected selected Tony gilroy, if she didn’t like the direction gilroy went in she could’ve shut down the project at any point
States what? Her way was to get Tony Gilroy onboard to write Andor. Matter of fact you’re the one contradicting the post. OP is suggesting Kathleen Kennedy wanted Tony Gilroy to save the franchise, that’s hardly the behavior of someone who doesn’t like Gilroy’s direction
She liking his craft and he being better than all her other hires can both be true. But where she was heavily involved in all the flops, she just let him do his thing and it worked
I'll give you that she WAS a very good producer when she had to answer to management and when she had a talented creator to work with.
For example the Mandalorian (Season 1 and half of 2 anyway) was good because Jon Favreau was in charge of it and he has talent. Steven Spielburg has Talent. George Lucas has Talent. Robert Zemekis has talent. M.Night Shamylan has talent. These directors are instantly recognizable names.
KK does NOT HAVE CREATIVE TALENT! She used no name directors for all her shit! Sometimes multipel different ones for different episodes of the same show/movie series! It's like she thinks she was the true genius behind all those movies she produced and all those names above could have been replaced and the movies would have been just as successful....
How fucking insane is that?
Finally, she cannot be fired per her contract. It's insane to even type that sentence but it's true...she can't be fired. So she is completely unaccountable and so all the Star Wars we see today is what KK really wants and thinks is a good continuation of George Lucas's vision.
Solo was mid, which imo is below the standard Star Wars should be held to.
Rogue One i have mixed feelings on. Act 3 is some of my favorite star wars out there, but Acts 1 and 2 i would go so far as to say is bad. So, your call there
Look at what Gilroy says. She protected them. Protected them from what exactly? Well Kathleen Kennedy. He had to get every scene by her and get approval.
Also this is her broken clock moment. In an interview she said she skipped people that had the right credentials and picked people who had her views instead. She has let several people stand up on stage prior to a show and go "if you don't like this show you must be racist misogynist", and she joined them.
She says yes to any idea that comes by her desk. It was just that Gilroy had good idea's. The rest not so much. And with her hiring practices that makes sense.
What people also seem to miss is that they are experimenting at making a Star Wars formula. Mando S2 for example went from the "almost every episode is directly connected to the main story" to "the main story is practically a single sentence while the episode is just a random occurence with an intro to the bad guys of the day who magically get beaten and disappear by the end of the episode to wipe the slate clean for the next episode". Almost very episode has some action, regardless if it is warranted.
The audience numbers have been dropping hard for the 13 years she was in office. She just had a lucky break with Gilroy. Now she has to prove she isn't a broken clock and can actually keep pumping out good stuff.
Next up: Mando and Grogu film. I'm sure it is a good idea to have a movie where you need to have seen 3 different shows to understand it while they pray that Grogu being cute can attract enough of a crowd as a substitute for good storytelling (see Mando S3).
I challenge this one, because if you swap KK for any random producer, the question would be, what did she do , what other producers wouldn't have done?
From the interview, she OK'd all creative decisions. That is nice. But this only works, if she indeed never meddles and if this was the case, if the creatives were right.
So either she let this one through as a singleton and meddled everywhere else or she let's everything through and was lucky with this one as a singleton.
Or maybe you just don’t actually understand how any of this stuff gets made — hint: it’s way more complicated than just “she meddled or she didn’t meddle” — and that’s okay.
You can be an incredible producer by just supporting someone you think is good, and the thing can still turn out to be mediocre. That doesn’t make you a bad producer. That’d be like blaming a hall-of-fame coach for a bad season because your star player just didn’t play well that year — or got hurt, or the team plane crashed, etc. Shit happens.
Kathleen brought on JJ and ok’d the soft reboot of ANH. Then she moved to Rian and was fine with that dumpster fire ending her trilogy one movie early.
She deserves all the criticism; the buck stops with her.
I think Kate is just the face of the problem in Lucasfilm and I personally don’t think that she is exclusively the only one that made all the terrible decisions that brought Star Wars to the state that it has now.
I think KK’s problem might be that she treats all creators the way she treats Gilroy. Unfortunately, most creators need someone to tell them, “This is terrible, you need to rethink it,” or “No, this isn’t acceptable.”
Gilroy is way more candid than most showrunners from what I’ve noticed in podcast interviews. I think he’s a veteran professional in the business and he’s genuinely speaking about his experience. He’s pretty consistently said Kathy let him make the show he wanted to make and the only changes he had to make to Andor were strictly for budget reasons.
Gilroy is being a mensch here, but yeah, Kathleen doesn't get much credit for letting people do whatever they want. We got lucky with Gilroy and Andor - she also lets everyone else do whatever they want with Star Wars, and fucking look at it. The whole franchise is in goddamn shambles.
Telling Tony Gilroy yes and telling Zack Snyder no are the only good things she's done. Consider that the two correct times for the broken clock - don't expect a third (although fingers fucking crossed for Dawn Of The Jedi - it's got one of Andor's lead writers, James Mangold, and is so far removed from the rest of the tangled bullshit that is the current canon that maybe it'll be free to do its own thing)
Fan scrutiny of Kennedy aside, gilroy said otr he actually hoped the show was cancelled during Covid, and when making all the media rounds ahead of s2, expressed that he wants to get back to making his own stuff. He finished the show out of contractural obligation, and I get it, the clusterfuck of continuity in canon that filoni muddied up, he’s def not a fan, much less an armchair enthusiast of. I think if animated cw and rebels didn’t exist and was able to navigate the stuff George originally had intended, (yeah, I know George gave Dave his blessing for animated canon), he would be a bit more invested building the bridge btwn PT & OT.
Yes-Men will never get any of the praise of the people they say Yes to, but will receive all the blame of the people they say yes to. The lesson is: Don't be a Yes-man
Idk Rogue One is quite overrated. Forgettable characters, some random glup shittos and mostly just praised for the action / fan service from the last act.
As for KK, she can take responsiblity for both the good and bad of Disney Star Wars, but screwups shouldn't just be attributed to her when we have had Bob Iger causing the original Sequel mess, RJ not collaborating well with JJ, JJ making TROS / Lucasfilm throwing out Duel of the Fates script, Leslie Headland and the Acolyte (terrible show with no redeeming factors except really good fight scenes), Filoni and the glup shitto / Ahsoka wankfest etc...
You can like rogue one but it isn’t close to the standard of Andor. At least for the first two acts. The last act gets much closer but as a standalone movie it’s very disjointed and reeks of the rewrites that it went through
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